But anyway, well, if you have a Bible with you, please take it and turn to the Book of Revelation Chapter 19, Revelation Chapter 19. Brothers and sisters, we are in the home stretch. Now don't applaud because I'll feel like you're hating this. And so go, oh shoot, we wish it could be 40 chapters of Revelation. So that's all right. Revelation Chapter 19, in the morning, we're going to be looking at the first 10 verses. Now what we're going to be looking at this morning is really the prelude to the return of Jesus. We're finally at that place in Revelation where we're going to see the return of Christ. And that'll be in the second half of chapter 19. But today in verses one through 10, we see the run up to that great event, our hope of seeing Christ come back for his own. And so I want to read for you this morning, the first 10 verses of Revelation 19. And if you're able, please stand as I read this portion of God's word. This is God's inspired word. It is holy and it has all of God's authority. Every word of it is true. And it's for our good. This is the word of God. After this, I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, crying out. Hallelujah. Salvation and glory and power belong to our God. For his judgments are true and just, for he has judged the great prostitute who corrupted the earth with her immorality and has avenged on her, the blood of his servants. Once more, they cried out, hallelujah. The smoke from her goes up forever and ever. And the 24 elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God, who was seated on the throne saying, Amen, hallelujah. And from the throne came a voice saying, praise our God, all you his servants, you who fear him, small and great. Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters. And like the sound of mighty peels of thunder, crying out. Hallelujah for the Lord, our God, the almighty reigns. Let us rejoice in exult and give him the glory for the marriage of the Lamb has come. And his bride has made herself ready. It was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bride and pure for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, write this, bless it or those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he said to me, these are the true words of God. Then I fell down at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, you must not do that. I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus, worship God, for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. This is God's word, let's pray. And now Lord, we ask that you would open our eyes and our hearts to the truth of your word today, Lord, where we need correction correctness, where we need encouragement, encourage us, so Lord. And through it all, God, equip us for every good work for your name's sake, we pray. Amen. You may have a seat. The chapter begins with those now familiar words after these things. Throughout Revelation, that sort of signals a change in vantage point for the apostle John as the Lord continues to unfold this great vision out before him. So it signals a change, and in this case, it is a rather significant change from what's recorded in chapters 17 and 18. The scene in those chapters, if you'll remember, was an earthly perspective of God's judgment upon Babylon. Babylon, of course, as we've said so many times, is symbolic for the wickedness in the world. It's symbolic for secularism at its worst expression, the corruption of the nations and the corruption of the governments and kingdoms of the world. Now, here in this chapter, all eyes turn toward what is happening in heaven. At the end of chapter 18, all of the saints are told to rejoice in the final destruction of wicked Babylon. And that's exactly now what John is describing here in this first part of chapter 19. And this is significant because what we're given here is a vision into the very meaning of history. We're coming now to the very end of the arc of human history, of Christ's final victory. And not only that, but we're going to be given a vision of our place in history, our place in Christ's victory. So verse one, what is John here? He hears a great voice of a multitude. I like that. He hears a great voice, but it's the great voice of a multitude. He's not hearing a cacophonist chaotic noise, but he hears this one great voice coming from the multitude in heaven. They are singing the same song as it were. They are on the same note. They are saying the same thing. And this is what they say. Salvation and power and glory belong to our God. And I think we can fairly call what John hears at this point. I think we can call it a hymn. The first two stands is verses one and two. Praise God for his gracious salvation and his righteous justice. And it begins with a shout of hallelujah. It's hard to whisper that word. It always has an exclamation point behind it. One commentator observes that hallelujah expresses quote, jubilant joy. It's a Hebrew word. If we were to translate it, it means praise Yahweh or praise the Lord. And wherever you go around the world, whether you worship with saints in Nigeria or France or Mexico or Virginia, you may not understand a word that they say until they get to this word. Hallelujah. We all of a sudden begin to speak Hebrew for one word. And that's because the ancient Greeks who first translated the Old Testament into Greek, we call that the Septuagint, the Greeks who did that chose to not translate, but just to translate the words hallelujah and amen. To leave them in their original Hebrew form, believing those two words to be too precious to translate. And so the shouting and the singing and one voice lifts up this one singular hallelujah to the Lord. And why? Because salvation and power and glory belong to Him. Think about what it means for salvation, to belong to the Lord. It means, among other things, Christian, that he has done it all from the first moment, you felt the stirring of conviction of sin. To the very first time, you repented of that sin and turned away from it. To the first moment, you can ever remember truly believing upon Jesus and trusting in Him. To the moment of your becoming more and more like Christ and less and less like the world, all of the way up to your being taken home to glory. All of it has been done and will be done by Him. He's done it all. This salvation belongs to our Lord. And so you can count on it being completed. Christian, he will not leave you behind. He will not kick you out of the family. Christian, he's done it all. Salvation belongs to our God. In verse three, there's a third stanza to the Him. And this is where it turns to celebrating God's righteous judgments over the wicked. And we've reflected on this before about how when we think about the call to rejoice over God's judgment of the wicked, to rejoice in that that starts to feel strange to us. I mean, given the high premium that the Bible places on love, given the command to even love our enemies, a call to rejoice in the destruction, the judgment of the wicked, feels very strange to us. And almost contradictory, because we're told so often in Scripture to love our neighbor and even to love our enemy. And so these visions of the heavenly hosts and the saints in heaven rejoicing and lifting up the hallelujah over God's judgment, that seems odd. Uncomfortable, maybe even contradictory. Now again, what we have to remember is that that day has not yet arrived. We're reading about something that is going to happen. And until then, we do labor to love our enemy. We do labor not to rejoice yet in their judgment, but to call them to safety, to plead with them, to come to Christ. What do we say last week, that as we think about the destruction of Babylon, until that day comes, we call upon, we plead with those living in Babylon, to come out, to know what we know, to know the Christ that we know. So we pray for them, we witness to them, we plead with them, to turn to Christ. But we also know that the day is coming when we will see as clearly as those in heaven see. And when the Lord and His righteousness finally does bring about the great cosmic justice that He has promised, we will not grieve over that. We will not be pulling back on Him, as though He is some kind of abusive parent, because He is not. When He does finally judge, we will rejoice, and it will be the right thing to do. And why, well, we're told here, right there in verse 3, why we will rejoice, why it's the right thing to rejoice, because Babylon, quote, had corrupted the earth with her immorality, and because the Lord on that day will finally avenge the blood of His murdered saints, our brothers and sisters in Christ. We will rejoice, because everything wrong will be made right. Every disease destroyed, every tear wiped away, every sin obliterated, every principality and power that ever raised a rebellious fist in the face of God Almighty will be brought low. And our voices will be added to the hallelujah. Then in verse 4, we read once again of these strange creatures, the four living creatures that we have seen a couple of times earlier, along with the 24 elders, we met them earlier in Revelation as well. Well, here they make their final appearance in this book. And what do they say? What do they say to all of this? They say, Amen, hallelujah. And like hallelujah, the word Amen remains and it's untranslated Hebrew form. It basically means this is true. It can also mean may it be. And this particular clause, amen, hallelujah, is found in only two places in the Bible. It's found right here. And it's found back in Psalm 106. And what's interesting about that is that in Psalm 106, where the words Amen, hallelujah are sounded. It happens in response to God's people being delivered from the wicked nations. And so there is this correspondence here, isn't there? As we saw earlier, the 24 elders, what is that? That's a multiple of 12 symbolic numbers in Revelation. It's a multiple of 12, 12 is a number that represents completeness. And it here it's multiplied by two. What are we seeing there? Well, I'm convinced what we're seeing there is a representation of the people of God, representing the people of God and their fullness. You had 12 tribes of Israel. The church in her infancy. You have the 12 apostles representing the church of Jesus Christ, the church now in her fullness. And along with those heavenly representatives of the full number of the people of God, we have with them again, the four living creatures. And remember the four living creatures? They were very odd in appearance. They were angelic beings who were made up of parts of all kinds of different animals. And they flew and they had eyes all over. And they had the head of one animal and the tail of another animal and so on and so forth. And what they represented was the wholeness of God's other creatures. And there's four of them, four, another important symbolic number in Revelation, four means earthly fullness. So you have references to the compass, north southeast and west. You have references to the quote, four corners of the earth. Well, here we have the four living creatures. And what's being gotten that here is that who's responding to the Lord now is the fullness of the church known in the 24 elders. And the fullness of the rest of the created beings, as they are represented here in these four strange living creatures. And what do they say? They say, amen, hallelujah. And to that, we see in verse five, another great voice, a great voice, lifted up from heaven, speaks up. And who this voice belongs to, we are not told. But this voice speaks directly to God's people, all of the servants of the Lord. It says, praise our God. It's a voice commanding to you and I. Praise our God. Again, this praise is connected directly to what we have seen already. God's final judgment, his fullness of his enthronement and his reign enacted, praise our God, all you, his servant, that's us. The word is dulyce, it can equally be translated as slave. Praise our God, all you, his servants, you who fear him, great and small. These are all of God's people who've been redeemed by the blood of Christ, beginning with Adam and Eve, the very first individuals who believed God's promise of salvation, both small and great. Here we have the whole encompassing nature of every conceivable status, small and great from kings to field hands, from the godliest martyrs to newly converted harlets, from missionaries, to death row inmates, turning to Christ in the final hour of their life. All of those who by the power of God's sovereign grace have been washed clean by the blood of Christ, all of you praise him, praise God we're told. And I wonder if you're feeling that today. I wonder if you're feeling that, you know, we are careful not to make feelings our master. We want to be real careful of that. But you know, as you read the Bible, I mean, just go to the Psalms, and we can answer the question whether or not feelings matter, they do matter. The Psalmist is not shy about looking inside and examining what he feels and how he's experiencing things that are happening. And I wonder, out of your own experience today, are you going, yes, praise God, or is there something in you that says, I don't know if I can do that right now. Soldiers in Military Historians, speak about what they call the fog of war. The disorienting effects of battle, the way that battle limits not only literal eyesight because of the smoke and the destruction going all around you, but also how it can disrupt good judgment. It's a fog not only over the eyes, but also over the mind at times. And so sometimes in battle, terrible mistakes are made. And this world is like a battlefield. One of the lessons we learn from the book of Revelation is that we are combatants in a war. And sometimes the fog of those battles surrounds us. And we don't feel like we can see clearly anymore. Oftentimes, it's all we can do to see just ahead one foot at a time. And we look around and can't even tell whether our side is winning. In fact, there are times when, as we seek to gain some sort of perspective through the fog of war, we're pretty sure it looks like our side is losing at times. Winning may appear for us at times, even like it's losing. But don't ever forget this. From heaven, all is clear. Our commander is not confused or disoriented in any way. His judgment is impeccable. His power is unassailable. We live in a world that's still in rebellion against God, a world that is still intoxicated with the wine of Babylon, but we believe and continue on in prayerful hope toward that day when God turns every suffering cry of His people. Every dismaying question, every crushing calamity, we look forward in prayerful hope that our God will one day turn all of those things, not just for some general people, but for us who are seated here right now, he will turn those terrible, horrible, painful experiences into a mighty in unison, hallelujah. This is the message of hope that lies at the center of revelation. Revelation, as we've said so often, is not given to us to make us better predictors. It's not meant to help us to solve some unlockable mystery, so we can finally find out whether or not the Antichrist is a rabion or Romanian. It's to give us hope. In this life, we have to navigate the fog of battle and sometimes that's confusing, and sometimes we're dismayed by it all, but we know enough, even now, we know enough to be at peace because we've read the last chapters. Now, beginning in verse six, we come to this event described as the marriage supper of the lamb. Still listening, John, here's the mighty roar of saints, reaching a crescendo of praise to the Lord for his victory over Babylon. Now imagine the power of a roar so great as it's described here in John's vision as something that's akin to the roar of many waters and thunder. Imagine the powerful roar of a hurricane. I don't know if you've ever lived along the coast, the Atlantic coast or the Gulf Coast. I grew up along the Gulf Coast, and we know hurricanes and their scary events and the power is unbelievable, and just when I got tired of violent weather, I decided to move to the Midwest, because hurricanes are scary, and then I found out about tornadoes and thunderstorms so great, they blow trees over and leave you without power for five days, and bring in hail so large that you replace your roof every other year. I remember in May of 1999, we were living in more Oklahoma, I was the youth pastor at First Baptist Church, more Oklahoma, and that now famous and dreadful tornado, tore through the southern part of Oklahoma City, more Oklahoma, and the highest wind speeds ever recorded, still on the books today, or that tornado at one point, it was a mile wide. And I've told you about it before, at that point it was just Karen and I, and Kate and Ryan was just a baby, and Matthew hadn't even come along yet, and we got into the closet of the Master Bathroom, and I arranged myself as best I could over my family. I remember holding onto the ankles of both of my little ones, and I remember my wife looking at me and saying goodbye, because we heard the train coming. It sounded like it might sound if you were under train tracks. We heard the roar moving closer and closer in the house shook, and the roar became loud and overwhelming, and we thought that it was just about to plow into us, and it passed by, it passed by near, and you're enough to do damage, but it passed by. Now imagine a roar like that, but what it brings is peace, and life, and order, and beauty, and joy. This is what John hears. As he hears the redeemed once again, shout out, like thunderous winds and rushing waters, hallelujah, and why, for the Lord our God, the Almighty reigns. He has conquered Babylon, all pretenders to the throne have been brought down, and the universal reign of God has now been inaugurated. That's what John is being told about here. And that's the first reason for all of this loud and thunderous praise. Then in verses seven and eight, we see that there's another reason for all of this praise. What do you see there in verse seven? For the marriage of the Lamb has come, and the bride is made herself ready. Now there are traditions reflected here that are deep in Israel's history. Jewish wedding customs dictated that, on her wedding day, a bride would make herself ready by bathing, anointing herself with fragrant oil, and dressing in fine linen. The bride groomed in, and his entourage would arrive at the bride's home, the home of her father, and escort her back like royalty to the home of the bride groom for the wedding feast, and the consummation of the marriage. Now, the depiction of God's people as his bride is common in scripture. The Lord is in covenant with his people. They are joined to him in unbreakable union. And that's why the apostle Paul tells us in Ephesians five that there is a mysterious likeness between a marriage relationship between husband and wife, and Jesus is love for his church. That's why as one commentator puts it, this, this marriage feast of the Lamb, this is quote, the centerpiece of the universal reign of God. We're being brought into the very meaning of history here. Theologian Douglas Kelly writes this, at last. Earth's history has finally reached its pre-ordained conclusion. The marriage ceremony of the Lamb and his bride, the church. Think about the implications here, folks. Think about the depth of meaning here. We, the church, are the bride of Christ, which means long before the foundations of the earth, the father, the son and the Holy Spirit, were in covenant together to bring about this very thing. We call that the covenant of redemption. The almighty and everlasting father, covenanted with his eternal son to give him a people, to give him a bride, a chosen race, made up of men and women from all the nations of the world. Men and women whose lives had been wrecked by sin. And before creation, God gave to his son this bride, to redeem and sanctify and ultimately to glorify. Jesus speaks of this very thing in the gospel of John. How the church, how his people are a gift to him from the father. And how he, Jesus, will never lose any of whom the father has given him. And so the father gave to the son a poor, pityable, corrupted people so that he might raise them up, incorruptible, victorious, and rich beyond measure. This is the meaning of history. And it's your story, Christian. You're a player in that story. The betrothal has already happened. That is, we have already been gifted by the father to the son. And so we live in that period between the betrothal, roughly similar to engagement, though much more binding. We live in between the betrothal and the wedding. I love what William Hendrixon writes in his wonderful commentary on Revelation. He writes this quote, in Christ, the bride was chosen from eternity. Throughout the Old Testament period, the wedding was announced. Next, the son of God assumed our flesh and blood. The betrothal took place, the price, the dowry was paid on the cross. And now, after an interval, which in the eyes of God is but a little while, the bridegroom returns, the church on earth, urns for this moment as does the church in heaven. You see what happens there? What's described in verse 9? John is commanded by the angel to write something. The angel says to John, write this down. Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the lamb. I should say so. This is the fourth of seven Beatitudes in the book of Revelation. That number seven, again, the symbolic use of numbers. Of the seven great Beatitudes or words of blessing, blessed are in the book of Revelation. This is the fourth. And notice here, this intentional mixing of metaphors that the church is both the bride of Christ and the church is simultaneously the invited guests to the wedding feast. Now, we find and scripture oftentimes is mixing or layering of metaphors. You find it in prophetic speech. You find it in apocalyptic literature. And what the mixing of metaphors does is it layers truth upon truth so that we get a deeper, denser, more robust understanding of what's being communicated. I mean, consider just the ways that the church of Jesus Christ is described. The various metaphors for the church in the New Testament. We are, of course, as we see here, the bride of Christ. The church is also the body of Christ. Paul writes mysteriously of us being the real Israel or spiritual genuine Israel. We're a holy temple where God's building were a kingdom of priests, we're a holy nation on and on. We're a great army. This wedding feast be attitude here is similar to the be attitude that Jesus speaks in Luke chapter 14, where he says, blessed is the man who will eat at the feast of the kingdom of God. And also, Jesus' words from Matthew chapter 8, verse 11, many will come from the east and the west and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. Even there, Jesus is saying, this salvation is going far and wide. In Matthew chapter 22, Jesus tells a parable about a wedding feast and not surprisingly, the wedding feast in Jesus' parable in Matthew 22, points to the very same reality that we're looking at here. It's a picture of God's redeemed people in the new creation. And in his parable, Jesus depicts the Father as a king. Now this king has a son and his son is getting married, sound familiar. And so the king sends out his servants with invitations throughout his kingdom to attend the wedding feast of his son. What a privilege and no one responds. These were those within the king's circle. The people living within the boundaries of his kingdom, people who had a special relationship with the king, but they rejected his invitation. They aren't interested in the king's son or his wedding. So this is what the king does. The king gathers his servants again and he sends them out a second time with another appeal to the same people to come to the wedding feast. He says it's going to be a tremendous celebration. And there's going to be the best of food. You don't want to miss this and they still would not respond. In fact, they were so offended by the king's largest that some of the invited guests seized some of those servants with the invitations and mistreated them, even killing some of them. And so the king responds in justice. But then he does something else. He gathers his servants once again and sends them far away from his kingdom to people who don't even know who he is yet. Min and women from all around, far and wide, he invites them now to the wedding feast of his son and they come. Now that's same parable has some really awesome and humbling things to say about God's sovereignty and all of this. This is where we get the statement many are called but few are chosen. But here I want to focus on that one feature of the parable, the expansive nature of the invitation and the role of his servants in that. You and me. Let me ask you this. Who will be at the feast on that great day? Because they knew you. So how do you need to work on your theology? Everyone here knows that the only ones that the feast will be there because of the sovereign work of God and you couldn't be more accurate. That is true. But the sovereign God who ordains the ends also ordains the means. And so the question stands. Who will be there? Because in God's kindness they cross paths with you who have a stack of invitations in your pocket. This church is an invitation printing press. We have an ever growing stack of invitations that are just here waiting to be taken out and given away. You know the gospel, Christian. If you remember this church, you better know the gospel. It's the message of salvation by the dying and rising of Christ. It has with it the call to believe in Jesus. To be given the gift of eternal life in the presence of God. You carry that around with you every day. Who's heard the invitation because they ran into you? I just want us to think about that. I want us to consider that. If it helps you to think that every day when you get up you've got a stack of invitations in your pocket. Go for it. But I want us to think about that. Who is going to be fortunate enough to cross paths with me today? Because I've got an invitation for them. You know it's significant that the Bible begins and ends with weddings. In Genesis chapter 2, we see the first marriage when God presents the woman to the man. And they were ruined by their own rebellion, by their desire to be gods unto themselves. But in his fathomless mercy, God had already planned that there would be another wedding. The wedding feast of the lamb and his ransom to people. And in those two weddings has found the meaning of history. In fact, you can no more understand the history of humanity and your place in it. Without this grand finale of the lamb's wedding feast, you can no more understand that than you can make sense out of algebra without numbers in excess. Douglas Kelly writes this. This is good. He says, sometimes in our lives, we do not feel like proclaiming hallelujah for the Lord our God, the Almighty reigns. That is not how it feels to the flesh, to our besieged minds in hard times. But faith tells us that the Lord is in charge, even during the worst moments of my life. This magnificent wedding day will demonstrate to an assembled universe in open fashion that the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. On that day and with that ceremony, we will appreciate that all our times of darkness have been necessary way stations for us to get to that day of glory. When we will shine forth with his light, transformed in faith and character as times of darkness did their own mysterious work within us. What a day of singing that will be when all is made clear and faith melts away into sight. It's good, isn't it? As I was walking through this passage this past week, one thought that kept coming back to me was that this passage portrays a vast multitude, the saints and the angels in heaven. All of them, and it shows them in exuberant praise. It shows them in a state of joy that is unmixed with any sorrow or pain or loss. And here's why that meant so much to me in that moment. Because they see what we do not see. They see everything we see, but they see all the things we don't see. They see everything from the beginning to the end. They see every sorrow, every calamity, the saints in heaven have experienced all of those sorrows in calamities. They've known every hard experience and yet they know everything now and they are no longer clouded by the fog of war. Think on this, the most exuberantly joyful individuals in the universe are those who see everything. And what is their response? Hallelujah, for the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory for the marriage of the Lamb is come and his bride has made herself ready. Amen. Hallelujah. Thanks be to God. Let's pray. Now, Lord, we ask your help so that your word would remain with us and would cause there to be great fruit. God comfort us in our sorrows, direct us in our joys. As we look forward to that great day that is yet to come, Lord. Let us be your witnesses we pray through Christ our word. Amen. Well, this morning we are going to be receiving the Lord's supper together. The Lord's supper is one of the two sacraments that Christ has given to his church. A sacrament is a holy thing. It's a holy mystery. So it takes what is ordinary in this case, bread and juice. And it uses it for mysterious.